When I said “artists and creators need to and ought to get paid” I should have said “paid if they want to be paid.”

You say, “The whole concept of copyrights is founded on the unproven hypothesis that more/better artistic works will reach the people if the authors are paid.” The important aspect of copyright, in my view, is that unauthorised third parties should not take (steal) an artist’s work and then make a profit from it. This is a higher priority in the Rights Office system than paying the artist.

Nicholas Bentley
http://www.commonrights.com

The whole concept of copyrights is founded on the unproven hypothesis that more/better artistic works will reach the people if the authors are paid. Of coursem, no one has proven if the hypothesis is true because the social scientists are on the sidelines for reasons that cry for an explanation. This, I call the Author Productivity Hypothesis (APH)

So until APH is proved, any method to get authors paid or paid better may be missing the mark altogether. Imagine that the if APH is tested and it turns out that the more authors are paid, the worse the author productivity.

ART IS BUSINESS TOO HYPOTHESIS:

There are two ways that road construction is paid in my country: From gasoline taxes and highway tolls. The first method, gasoline taxes, costs very little. The second method employs about (I guess) 1,000 employees and cost us about 40 million dollars per years and much frustration at the toll booths. Also so as to avoid the non payment of tolls many needed entry and exit ramps wer not included into the toll roads when constructed, addig greater travel time for many automobile users, the people.

Asuming then that APH is proven to be true, then there is a need to decide how authors are best (to obtain the most benefit to society) paid, 1. through taxes or 2, after the production of each work, a method analogous to the road toll system, a system pushed by banks under the excuse that roads need to be financed by banks and that toll income is necessary ti pay the debt. To pay authors this is the current method used almost uniformly because it has been established by publishers and artists operating as businessmen under the hypothesis that that Art is Business Too (ABT).

Then another research is need to determine the truthfulness of the ABT hypothesis.

Maybe then we can start thinking of ways to propagate digital copies of art and how to pay the authors, if that is good.

BTW, some of the gratest artist never made any money with the current system. My father was one of the great musicians (sorry for my immodesty) and he never made any money while many less talented musicians became millionaires from their art.

Rafael venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com